Not Yet A Storm
by The Hermione Granger Fan Club
Summary: Storm finds a memory of her parents deep within herself. (My first 'X-Men' fic)


When Storm looked back on her life, what first came to mind was her work as part of the team, as one of the X-Men. As Storm. Or Miss Munroe, if you were a student. Redeeming the wrongdoers and righting the wrongs of the Brotherhood of Mutants was tiring work, and not exactly what she cared to think about in the lazy parts of her days and nights.  
  
She supposed her teenage years as the Beautiful Windrider, bringer of rain to a parched land, were memories the more withdrawn students and yes, even teachers at the school would die for. To be worshipped, revered as something more powerful than royalty and as divine as the land itself...  
  
Those memories buzzed together in her brain in a most unappealing way. She remembered slowly rising into the air, towards angry black clouds, to make them weep their raindrops onto the gasping land. Flying, just taking a step up into the sky.  
  
All of those memories so like one another. Some she was sure had happened when she was fifteen, or it could have been fourteen... or seventeen...  
  
Thievery in Egypt? She was surely the pride and joy of the gang, Achmed el-Gibar's special pet, for although her distinctive looks compromised her and made her more easily remembered, she had so much stealth. Unlike other child thieves, she didn't panic when she couldn't open a door, lift a latch, escape a situation. She had essentially had a woman's mind in a neat little child's body.  
  
Oh, but that was not correct. They'd had to shape her into the perfect cat burglar, force her not to think about the walls pressing in on her, crushing her, forcing every breath from her until she was lifeless. With the right combination of threats, taunting and 'practice' (this involved locking her inside a small room with some tools and ignoring her wild begging until she stopped hyperventilating and freed herself) she learned to disregard her claustrophobia for short amounts of time. It always kicked in HARD if she was locked up too long with no way to escape, so little Ororo had learnt quickly.  
  
Or what about as far back as she could remember? Goddess, her mother's bloodied arms around her, trapped by tons of rubble, the only time in her short life when the feeling of her dear mother's arms around her terrified her.  
  
She would never want to remember that.  
  
Ororo stood outside the mansion barefooted in the dead of night. The sounds of insects moaned in her ears. She did not heed them and instead lifted her eyes to stare directly into the moon and stars. The grass was so cold beneath her feet it burned. She concentrated on that, and on the sky.  
  
She'd make up her own memory.  
  
How was she, newborn? Ororo couldn't think of any point in her life when the whole world would be new and everything surprised her, and she had no powers and couldn't do anything for herself. The concept was unreal.  
  
She would have been a very beautiful baby- obviously, being descended from her mother and all. N'Dare Munroe shared colouring with her tiny daughter- the eyes like blue jewels, the dark skin and hair the white of centuries.  
  
How old was N'Dare? Ororo couldn't remember. This irritated her, and unused to being irritated she pushed it from her mind. She'd always thought her mother was beautiful. It was just a fact of life. The sky was blue, the summer dirt was black and N'Dare Munroe was beautiful. But Ororo, thinking about it in depth, seriously had no clue as to how old her mother had been. She didn't have a single photo of her parents, although she knows what kind she'd like. Maybe an ultra-serious picture of them in their New York home, either one with a snoozing bundle that nobody could ever pinpoint as a napping Ororo. Or a picture of them in the Egypt home, although that brought back horrible memories...  
  
... her mother's arms stiff around her... crying and crying, and about to die, and nobody would ever care...  
  
Oh, by the Goddess. The kind of picture she'd have liked was any kind with David and N'Dare Munroe in it.  
  
Did she look like her father at all? She vaguely remembered people commenting on the extraordinary resemblance between mother and daughter, but when she meditated on it her eye shape was similar to her father's. Also her height, although the priestesses Ororo was descended from were notorious for being tall. One thing she remembered distinctly about her parents was that they had been almost precisely the same height. N'Dare's shoulders were only a fraction below her husband's.  
  
And there in the dark, blades of soaking grass burning at the soles of her feet, she recalled a sweet memory of pleasure, pain, revelations and her parents...  
  
Night insects buzz and Ororo knows she shouldn't be outside, she'll get bitten.  
  
She's running about in the back courtyard. For her tender age Ororo is such a serious child, not so much sombre as calm. Although she is the cherished only child of her parents she is not spoilt at all, and does not particularly set out to please them. In Ororo's simple little life, everything happens the way it should.  
  
Mother and Father sit at the table just inside the door, talking quietly with each other. Ororo's white hair flies about her shoulders as she paces back and forth quickly. Ororo rarely runs. She has no need to run. In public, an adult always holds her small hand. In her house she will always be safe. She has no need to run.  
  
But now she's running, thin yellow nightdress spinning about her, and she accidentally hurts her foot on an irregular tile. She trips over and curls up on the stones, but inside her parents, who laugh softly together, don't notice.  
  
She bites her lip and shuts her eyes fiercely against a wail of pain, and scoots over to a small army of potted plants Mother has ranged about the edges of the courtyard. She knows she's getting her nightdress dirty but she doesn't especially care and besides, Mother won't scream and slap her like some mothers she's seen. Mother will just pick her up and carry her upstairs to her little room, put her to bed in a clean nightdress and say in tones Ororo will one day adopt as her own, "Please don't do that again, Ororo."  
  
It's not that Mother is cold with Ororo, Goddess, no. She is far from it. Father and Mother are alike, calm, giving compassion only when they feel it is deserved. Father is slightly more easygoing than Mother, but both always bestow their love on Ororo. She appreciates that. In their lives together, she won't ever have to worry about whether their love is false.  
  
Ororo is so small that if she hunches over, clutching her poor foot, she can almost hide inamongst the ferns.  
  
"Ororo!" her mother calls. "Where are you?" She seems to have a sixth sense for telling when her baby is in distress.  
  
She doesn't answer right away. She holds onto her hurt ankle with two hands and stares teary-eyed at one of the leaves hovering in front of her blue eyes.  
  
Father joins in. "Ororo, are you all right?"  
  
Ororo doesn't cry. The leaf, however, for no reason, accumulates a few shining droplets of water which begin to slide down it like tears, quivering at the very tip of the bowed leaf before falling and splashing on the paving.  
  
It's no storm, but she knows that she made that water, that tiny rain, and is very proud of that.  
  
She looks at it in wonderment for a moment and a little smile twitches her mouth. Suddenly Father parts the leaves above little Ororo's head. She looks up at him dolefully.  
  
"Hurt m' foot, Father," Ororo tells him sadly.  
  
He picks her up and before she knows it she's in her little bed, clean and relatively unhurt, although her foot's a bit sore. N'Dare kisses her little girl's cheek and sits on the edge of the bed a second, patting her hair.  
  
"Little girl," she says quietly, more to herself than to Ororo. "Little Ororo, you've made us so happy together."  
  
Most nights Ororo will sit right up in bed, put her arms around whichever parent is putting her to bed and hug them, but tonight she lies still and sleeps.  
  
And outside her window a blissful rain begins to fall, marring the sand outside the front gate and bowing Mother's plants.  
  
Ororo opened her eyes and found a similar smile, like the one of childish sleep, on her face.  
  
That one was a memory to hold onto.  
  
* * *  
  
DISCLAIMER: 'X-Men' belongs to a movie studio and a guy whose name I think is Stan Lee. Not me. So don't sue.  
  
NOTE: I've compiled this from both Movie and Comicverse facts. I have never read the comics but I did very much like the cartoon when I was young and I ADORE the movie now. This is my first 'X-Men' fic, a meaningless drabble because I thought it would be interesting to explore an innocent Ororo in something that could be construed as depth.  
  
I will edit this at most- it's not being continued, it's definitely a one-shot, as I have a multi-chaptered 'Dark Angel' fic that needs updating. This is my very first 'X-Men' fic, written very late on a school night, so please be a little bit gentle in your criticism. How about "That SUCKED!" instead of "YOU DESERVE TO DIE!!!"? Laters! 


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